It’s nice to see the team back off from another dumb policy. At the beginning of spring training (and IIRC the offseason) Quade said that the Cubs were going to be more aggressive on the basepaths. Via the hobbit:

“I almost feel like we’re forcing something that we shouldn’t,” Quade said. “It goes against everything (I believe) — ‘We’re going to be aggressive, we want to run …’ Yeah, you’re going to run yourself into a lot of outs….We just need to run with our heads.”

Much like the decision to release Carlos Silva this is more of a common sense, let’s not do something negative move than necessarily a positive development. But it’s nice to see the Cubs pull their head out of the sand twice in three days.

I guess they improved last year (laughing). 2006 was the last relatively decent year, but that was buoyed by Juan Pierre’s baserunning numbers. A few other regulars, such as 2008 Kosuke, 2008 Mark Derosa’s Stubble, and oddly enough 2010 Soriano and Koyie have put up EQBRRs above 2, but overall the Cubs are an old team without speed.